"No," she replied; "but I thought, if he came to-night, it's so bright and all, I'd get a peep at his face. It would be awful if he were a dissipated man!"
"You don't know her, and you don't know him, and you don't know her folks, and what difference does it make to you whether he runs a church or a roulette wheel?" I asked mildly.
I went into the house and—well, yes, I might as well admit it—sat at the window where I could command a clear view of the parlor opposite. This affair was getting to be personal with me. And then I think a fellow ought to show an interest in anything that is close to his wife's sympathies. So while she watched on the porch, I watched from the window.
He didn't come that night, and he didn't come the next night. But while I was watching—not obtrusively, you know, but just sympathetically—a messenger boy ran up the steps. The door opened halfway and he delivered a message and waited a moment, and then left, dashing up street on his wheel. I was pondering, when our telephone bell rang. I answered. A sweet young voice called:
"Exchange, give me Mount Vernon 1,000, please—the Hotel Belvedere."
I broke in.
"Hello! Hello! You're on a busy wire! Exchange——"
"Oh, please, sir, please get off the line and let me have it! This is very important!"
I mumbled something and hung up the receiver. Then I went back to my window and gazed across the street again. The hall light was turned on—the first time I had noticed it alone. The pale blind was down, but the light—why, a Silhouette at the telephone!
I ran to the kitchen, where my wife was messing with pots and pans.